Once we had recorded the drums, the next section we need to record is the bass.
To do this we used the kick drum mic from before, AKG d112, and placed it directly in front of the bass amp. This is so we capture the bass frequencies more as these would either cut through the mix or be masked by the bass frequencies from the other instruments used. The reason we used this mic is because the low frequency response is better than just a standard dynamic microphone. It is important to mention we placed the bass amp in the dead room to eliminate any unwanted sounds and I played the bass from the control room so I could easily see the editing window on Protools to see where all the parts were in the song. the settings on the amp needed to be altered as initially the bass sound was to sharp so to give it more of a warm feel, we reduced the high end and raised the bass.
To pick up the actual sound of the bass guitar used, we decided to also DI the bass to ensure the other frequencies are there apposed to just a mass amount of bass. to do this we use the line out input on the amp and plugged a jack to jack into a DI (direct input) box which we then plugged into the tower in the control room which was directly inputted into the desk.
Although the amp was in a separate room, I decided I wanted to hear the track through headphones to ensure that I am playing along to the actual recording opposed to a slightly delayed sound. This was very import and as we didn’t use a click track so I needed to hear exactly when the kick drum occurred to follow that for tempo and dynamics.
I played through the track once to practice and then we recorded. during the recording process I made one mistake at the end where I didn’t let the guitar ring out which we had to redo separate using a pre roll on Protools to ensue I could play that note in time and to the correct dynamics.
Once we recorded the bass we adjusted the levels of each channel i.e. the DI and the mic ones so we had a good balance between all the frequencies captured. after we were happy with the sound, we grouped the DI track and the recorded sound from the AKG d1112 together so we could alter the two levels together within our individual mixes and we coloured and labelled the two tracks to make it easier to view in Protools when editing.